With another terrible start and second-half collapse in the books, Rockets coach Kevin McHale was open to making changes. He just did not have much enthusiasm for it. The problems, he knew, were much deeper than changing the names introduced before the game.

"We're going to have to take a look at everything right now," he said after the Denver Nuggets rolled to a 22-point lead and easily sent the Rockets to 105-95 loss Wednesday night at Toyota Center. "But mostly, we have to get back to (being) us."

McHale hoped getting back to what had worked before the Rockets cratered would be a solution because if this is who they really are, the past two weeks of losing will be a maddening prelude to the agonizing times ahead.

As with their stretch of eight losses in nine games, the Rockets were going well, hit a rough spot and then fell apart, demonstrating many of the issues of the January collapse. They made 21 mostly careless turnovers before they even reached the fourth quarter. They stopped running, stopped moving the ball and themselves. They were beaten off the dribble on defense and in the paint.

"We just need to do a good job of being ourselves the whole game," Jeremy Lin said. "We show stints and spurts of who we can be. Then we show spurts of who we don't want to be."

Everything the Rockets had hoped to solve at their Tuesday practice and had seemed to have corrected after Wednesday's poor start fell apart until the Nuggets' Wilson Chandler was almost skipping down the lane to the rim and JaVale McGee was tossing a pass to himself off the backboard to a one-hand catch and spike.

"It was like it's been for a while with us," McHale said after a long postgame, locker-room session. "It just snowballs on us. You call a timeout. Call another one. We're not able to pull ourselves out of those minor tailspins."